France

We’re still at Beynac. The last few days have been scorching (up till now we’ve had some sun, some rain, some clouds. Some of the rain has been mega).

Yesterday we had the most superb day. Coffee and Internet in Beynac – a 10 minute walk along the river, then came back and had a baguette hotdog merguez lunch, lots of reading, relaxing etc with a copy of the Times,. Then we cooked up a BBQ with pork and lamb.

I’ve made a new BBQ – version 2. Version 1 wasn’t drawing so it needed fanning. Version 2 however has none of these limitations, and in the end, turned out hot enough to smelt iron. This resulted in wonderfully seared skewers, and a loss of arm and hand hair.

I’ve also (at last!) managed to procure a 240v to 12v adapter powerful enough to run the fridge. We couldn’t leave it on all the time powered from the car – even with the solar panel we were killing the battery. It has made a HUGE difference. We now have a proper fridge that really chills beer!. It chills food of course too. This makes more of a difference than you think. It gives us the ability to of course drink cold beer (did I mention cold beer?) but more importantly, to Kirstin at least, we can buy real food and plan our meals.

I can’t tell you how sublime yesterday was. Sipping beers, cooking on the BBQ, scorching heat, reading the paper, playing games on my laptop. All set in a lush field by the river Dordogne. Heaven. So much so we wondered why we were actually planning to leave the next day (today). So we haven’t. I’m sitting under a tree typing this, with Entrecote steaks in the fridge and a bottle of chilled rose. We’ll move tomorrow. Probably. No rush.

(I’m nature’s child now)

During supper, at about 8pm I noticed loud “fan” noises coming from near by. Really loud, like a microlite taking off, except the noise never varied. I twigged that it might be a hot air balloon pre-filling with cold air (they use a giant fan to do this) but it was far too loud for that. So I took a wander to the river bank right by us and low and behold, I was right, except it was five balloons, all filling at once! – right across the river in a tiny area. They all took off at once, sometimes baskets nearly hitting the other balloons. A cool sight.

OH, nearly forgot, we went into Sarlat on Bastile day to watch the fireworks. A very very pretty town, and a large one for round here.

There were lots of live bands dotted around the streets with the main attraction in the main square. They were truly awful. Big stage, big lights, big projector and screen. Then a Phil Collins song started, with the video on the big screen. No way! I thought, he can’t be here… Nope. Some French bird that sang like someone on a cruise ship covered a non stop medley of his songs. She was crap, out of time with the video screen and just plain awful. Why would a woman cover Phil Collins songs?? Odd choice.

After laughing and leaving, which a lot of other people seemed to be doing, we wandered up and watched the fireworks. Great show and totally unsafe. No regard for safety distances. Shells were raining down streaks of burning effects into the crowds. Not just little bits either; large trails of burning willow-effects were landing on peoples’ heads. Bear in mind the crown was entirely family based.

Still, no one seemed bothered. The French have such a different way of doing things. It was a real community atmosphere. No pushing or rushing, and each time the show lulled for a few seconds, everyone clapped politely. Mind you, a fat woman with a huge ass sat down, adjusted her rump, then moved back 6 inches and actually sat right on my sandaled foot, totally “eclipsing” it, dead center. It was warm and soft but frightening. She didn’t even flinch when I “withdrew” it.

On another subject, I read on the Internet that the French take their holidays from 15th July to 15th August. So far our camping neighbours have been either retired French couples, Netherlands, German, Dutch or English fogies with caravans. So generally peaceful. Last night, the 15th, a French family in an RV arrived, parked 6 feet from us (in a near empty field) and then proceeded to turn their TV on at 10 in the evening. With all their windows open. .. Like we are camped in a one star site, with no facilities so we can have peace, and we want to hear French TV!?!?! Cretins. We watched a movie on the laptop with our headphones on to drown it out (oh the irony).

At about midnight they all moved about in their camper like elephants, for an hour, with someone coming outside and flashing his torch through our tent, and generally being arses. I loudly made a sarcastic comment about really enjoying being the subject of a searchlight. They quietened down after that, though I suspect it was purely coincidence.

We called them “The Louds”. A term picked up from Pete and Mary which they use to refer to some neighbours they have at their country cabin.

Fortunately, The Louds left this morning so we are all set for another stunning day.

I’m buying a longer extension cable so we can camp further from where the RVs go in future.

Posting from Carcassonne on "stolen" wifi :-)

Oh - here is a movie of our canoe trip!

Wine time!

Slightly misleading picture. We passed Pomerol and went to St Emilion (Bordeaux region), purely because it’s renowned to be the prettiest wine village/region in the area.

It did not disappoint! On arrival we had a walk around the town and it’s stunning. All old sand stone and medieval. When you approach the area the 1st thing you notice is that every inch of ground is occupied by vines. Miles and miles of them, as far as you can see. We even saw a roundabout that had vines in the middle.

(Kirst at St emilion – Vines as far as the eye can see – hmmmm)

Such a pretty town, all cobbled and steep with more wine shops than you can throw a grape at – one wine shop per eight people who live there. But first, lunch was in order, so we found a restaurant with a lovely terrace and feasted. I had the local traditional dish – confit du canard, which has always been a favourite. K had Margaret du canard. Poor ducks.

We worked off lunch with a further exploration of the town which is no easy feat , given the steepness of all the streets.

Every time you round a corner you are greeted with a new scene that takes your breath away.

We had a poke around a few wine shops and it’s a different world. Wine here is less than half the price of wine back home in the UK. I saw one of my favourites – Chateau Les Ormes De Pez, 1998, for £40 – I’d have to pay over £100 at home. It was a drool fest! – every shop had a selection of wines that you can only dream about. A lot of Pomerol and St Emilion of course, and plenty of superb vintages of Petrus. Shame a Petrus is not in our current budget, even at half price. P.s. 2004 was clearly a bad year for St Emilion. Always when we saw a 2004 it was 1/3rd the price of the years either side. There is a chance I got that year wrong so don’t go and bin your 2004!

Once we were acclimatised we settled on a pitch at a campsite that cost 30 Euros a day – far too much, but it was well located. We stayed there for three nights. A lovely place though.

They were cheeky beggars - they charged 50 Cents just to freeze a blue block for you, and the wi-fi was pricey. Still, nice area so we lumped it.

Like I said, shockingly cheap wine. We bought St Emilion 1998 Grand Cru from the campsite shop for £10 a go. Drank it like cola. What a treat. Was kind of surreal walking round seeing EVERYONE drinking Grand Cru and Grand Cru Classe St Emilions with their crap camping dinners.

(these little ducklings – “cheep cheeps” as K called them, came up with their mother and walked right across our pic nic blanket – was far too cute so I fed them mackeroons. They’d take my whole finger at the same time, and my toes, and peck at my legs – got through all our spare food : - ) )

After a day or so we set off on a day trip to the Dune du Piya – on the coast opposite the Cap Feret. It’s the largest sand dune in Europe. A real sight to behold. You can see right out to see to the Cap Feret, and when you turn around, all you can see is forest.

(Easy way up)

(My parents friends, Liz and Alistair live over there...)

(The fun way down)

On the way back we popped into a garage to get the tracking sorted on the car. It was way out and pulling to the right, exasperated by the fact we are driving on the right side of the road – so the camber was pulling even more. You couldn’t take your hands off the wheel for more than a second or you’d be in trouble. So we got it sorted – though we did get bored waiting the 45 minutes it took….

We moved on today to Beynac – 2 and a half hours further down the Dordogne. There are two opposing castles here, either side of the river, and lots of other sights to see, not to mention canoeing the Dordogne – which we are doing on Sunday – 5 hours down the river – lovely!

(Saw this on the way – tractor that straddles the vines. Not sure why, but it looked cool)

After nosing around we’ve got a pitch on a super basic site. No facilities really, just pitched up by the river. We did go and have a look at the more comprehensive campsites nearby but just got that feeling again that you end up being isolated.

(Our new view – that’s the Dordogne)

So! – Tomorrow – sightseeing, Sunday – canoeing, Monday, well, it’s Bastille day so we are off to Sarlat to watch the fireworks!

Update – Sunday.

All set-up in Benyac we popped across the river to see Chateau Castelnaud. It sits on one side of the Dordogne, opposite another chateau - Chateau Beynac. They two families feuded for centuries apparently. French hey!

It was a great castle to visit. It was loaded with rebuild trebuchets, mangonels, cannons, all that kind of stuff, which I love (lots of wasted years on computer games attackign castles).

We picked a good day too - no English there so we got our won touur guide to ourselves. She explained all the technicalities of seige warfare and defense - most of which I know anyhow but a few new ones were in there to be learnt.

(Yo! chuck us a rock)

(Whoever lived here had commanding views)

With that kind of view, you get the chance to play with things like.....

Loads of windy stairs, and best of all, you could go to the top and out on the ramparts. Something you dont' often get a chance to do.

(This one is clearly for the drinking man)

A great visit all in all, and we could not resist....

Today we went on a canoo trip down the Dordogne. We had multiple choices of departure pionts (they van you up to the start with your boat) - we of course chose the 22 kilometre one, assuming the shorter ones were gay.

I'm typing this with a sore neck and back. Kirstin has sore hips and neck. It was really pretty, and some of the sections were fast / rapid, but we had a headwind some of the time and by half way were were knackered!

(This is, I promise, a Confit de Canard Pizza! - I had to try it. Still not convinced duck and cheese go together)

An exhausting but very scenic trip! - I'd have more pics but I took mainly video to make a small montage which I'll post next time I find wifi.

Back to the tent shortly to have another BBQ. We bought a rack and we make our own under a tree :-)

Bastile day tomorrow. We considered rushing the 4 hours down to Carcassonne to catch the mega foreworks but by all accounts it gets madly busy and you need to be there by noon so we'll stay here and catch the local ones.

Wow! – we are finally on our next stage. London was fun – it was great to hook up with our friends and family and catch up. A special thanks to Matt (again!) for giving us somewhere to sleep and drink far too much.

We had a lovely day in Balham park and caught up with Matt, Justin, Larry, Eva and Clare.

We spent most of the time organising the European element. When I say “organising”, I mean getting gadgets and camping gear. We didn’t actually plan anything travel related.

We wandered into Millets in Wimbledon, and after some negotiations, left with practically everything we needed. A 6-man tent. No point in being cramped. A 12volt fridge, sleeping bags, cookers, inflatable mattress, tent lights (yep, we have tent ceiling lights that have a switch by the “door” and also in the bedroom) and lots of other things – not forgetting a HUGE solar panel. A 15Watt jobby that comes with a regulator that uses the car battery to “help” when you need it but stops you from drawing the battery until it’s dead. To give you an idea of scale, the solar panels in my backpack kick out 2.5Watts. 15Watt is enough to fully charge a car battery in 3 days of sunlight.

Being a bit of a nerd I decided that a “test erection” was in order….

Matt and I struggled. It took over an hour to get it up (phnarr phnarr). This would have to improve…..

The other sunbathers in Balham park looked bemused but entertained.

The next step was loading the car. Bearing in mind it has a 144 litre boot it was no small task! Imagine the boot of a normal car, then fill it as full as you think it will go, then look at the space left – that’s about the size of our boot. I had to load everything in a precise order, using every available inch of space. So much so we’ve done away with the spare wheel and now carry a can of “tyre weld” – the stuff that has air and foam in a can to get you out of an emergency until you can get another tyre.

I grabbed a cheapo boot rack and a super cheap bag and that’s where the tent, the folding chairs and table, and one rucksack go. Oh, and all the kitchen stuff.

Not bad really, considering how much stuff we have.

All packed and ready to go, so that’s what we did. I booked us a cheap crossing to Calais. At this stage Kirstin questioned whether Calais was the right place to go and I realised that we had no idea really. I just went on the assumption of “start from the top and you can’t go wrong”. Not a bad philosophy I reckon.

(waiting for our boat)

I have to say, it felt fantastic to be on the road again. The only catch was we had no plan whatsoever and France is an awfully big place. We have got a Michelin camping guide, some random book on France (which is hilariously useless – it has such quotes as “we won’t cover the really famous places like Caen as you will surely know about them already…” – great) and a road atlas.

Fortunately Richard Davies recently sent me 6 rambling emails about his favourite places in France, being a huge Francofile, so we grabbed the 1st place he suggested – Honfleur, and went for it, keying it into the GPS but telling it to avoid motorways / pay routes. No point being in a rag-top and going 130k’s on a motorway.

We were quite tired and pretty much caned it down, relieved that the HUGE bag on the boot was staying where it was supposed to. When we eventually found our chosen campsite at about 4pm it was a big culture shock…. In a good way.

We’ve read that France is set up for camping (say “camping” in an overly French accent and you have it down to a tee – especially exaggerating the “ping”) and that it’s a national past-time. Well what we have read it true. I’ve spent many an early-teenage year with my family camping in the South of France, but that’s a little different – all sand and sea and at that age, little interest in what’s going on around you other than girls and cheap booze. In the country side it’s stunning. And boy are they organised!

Practically every single village and town has a camp site, and if the village is too small to host a campsite, they let you camp on their football pitch for free. The campsites have every facility you can think of – including pools, bars, restaurants, steak-frite vendors, washing, showers, TV, electricity, water, shops, you name it, but the beauty is , you can choose how basic you want to be, and how insular, or how involved you want to be.

When we arrived at our 1st site, in Honfleur, we got the choice of a “plot” – which is a neatly hedged off square buy a through-track, supplied with running water and electricity, or, a large field area with no ‘leccy or water but in a wide open space – eu naturalle if you like. You still of course have access to all the facilities. With all our solar self sufficiency we of course opted for the basic option and found ourselves in a large grassed area to ourselves. Save money and get closer to Mother Nature. That was the plan, and it worked fine.

We whacked the tent up in far less than the hour that Matt and I managed on the 1st attempt…

You can clearly tell Kirstin is loving the camping life : - )

Pleased as punch we unpacked and got ourselves settled, with our portable fridge plugged into the car and our solar panels out. At this stage we realised why everyone else with a tent was pitched on the one other open area – we were right behind a road and the grass what littered with dog shit. Can’t have everything.

The next day we drove 3k’s down to Honfleur. A stunning harbour town with even more stunning architecture. The whole harbour is surrounded by restaurants offering Moule Frites for 12 Euros. Not bad we thought. It was when we ordered our drinks we realised we were in a tourist trap. 4.5 Euros for a half… that’s £8 a pint!!! We had a lovely day to be fair but quickly realised we will have to be a little more wise in future. The local restaurant near the campsite was a fraction of the price and the service was superb.

(Honfleur)

(More Honfleur)

We made a few discoveries that caught us out. i.e. we ended up having to buy wine from the restaurant after discovering the French shops all close from 12.30 to 2.30, and we missed ordering our bread and croissants by half an hour.

We also discovered that the “regulator” that is supposed to stop the car battery going dead doesn’t work! – flat battery. Fortunately, half an hour’s charge with the solar panels was enough to get us started.

After 2 nights at Honfleur we set off for Mont St Michell. This time the drive was spectacular. Roof off, in the sun, no rush. A real joy. We drove through village after village, all with old beam style houses. Bags of character. Saw a particularly odd “water sphere” on a roundabout in one town.

Rocking up at the campsite at Mont St Michelle today, we were a little more savvy than last time, though we still made mistakes. We realised that electricity was only an extra 2 Euros per day, but still turned it down assuming we didn’t need it.

(all parked and ready to unpack)

We managed with little effort to get the tent up and complete within less than 30 minutes this time!

(Notice the solar panels in the dash board of the car.. they usually sit up outside)

It turns out we are a lot close to Mont St Michell than we thought. I went for a walk around the site, and after about 20 paces was this view….

Not bad! – we are planning to walk to it tomorrow.

All said and done, we are loving the camping so far. We’ve already made one compromise though… we now have ELECTRICITY! – I noticed the power supplies on the pitch next to us so we bought the relevant cables. Having the laptop going flat all the time was becoming a pain, and we can also use our electric mosquito repeller now. And we need it! – both got several huge bites already. I felt a sting half an hour ago and looked down to see a monster of a mozzie sucking my blood. Can’t have that and the normal mosquito coils that burn don’t seem such a good idea in a tent…..

Loving it and looking forward to scouring France for adventure and views.

A Tout a l’heur!

Update – well, we don’t get much access to the web so here is my next instalment….

Mont St Michell – Impressive sight – I’ve been there before , can’t remember when. We took a stroll (climb) up to the abbey at the top but bailed out of going in as they wanted 9 Euros each. Bit of a rip off and we aren’t really churchy people

We didn’t stay long. I guess we are culturally vacuous. Maybe an hour! : - ) – was a good healthy walk though – about a mile from the campsite.

On our walk back we decided there was little point staying any longer so we packed up. We’ve got it down to under an hour now. Off we went, in search of a bit more sun. We got caught in some rain in Honfleur. It started drizzling so we got in the tent and closed the “doors”. I made a comment about hoping we got some “proper” rain to test the tent out. I got what I wished for – it absolutely chucked it down, so much so that it started coming in where the zips meet the fabric in places. Nothing problematic, but we certainly had to make damn sure the ground sheet was inside the fly sheet. Not seen rain like that in a while…

All packed… and nowhere to go. No plan of course – we must get better at this. We grabbed the map and picked the Loire Valley as it’s further south (better weather) and of course famous for its river and chateaus. Randomly, we decided to head for the river near Angers as it seemed a feasible distance and kind of in the right place. We had a super drive down. Half on fast dual carriageways with the hood up, and half down lovely country roads with the hood down. I’ve found I can’t fling the car round roundabouts at speed as the front wheels skip – there is so much weight on the boot. Ahh well.

One of the odd things about this region we have discovered is that it doesn’t get dark until about 11pm. This gives the great advantage that you don’t need to worry about arriving at your next campsite early to pitch up. The disadvantage, is that the sun doesn’t really seem to work until about 11am.

We got to our target campsite just below Angers mid afternoon, and being the experienced campers (tenters!) we now are, we took a stroll around to check it out. A good move. It was all neat and sectioned off with hedges like the previous ones, but it lacked the image we had of camping by the river – which was 40 yards away across a large concrete road. It just wasn’t right so we grabbed the map and then decided to drive along the North bank of the river and picked another camp site from the Michelin guide and headed for that (at La Rosiere). En-route we passed several other campsites which we made a mental note of.

The camp site at Les Rosier was another Michelin 4 star jobby, and to be honest, after strolling around, we both agreed it had a very “Butlins” feel to it. All very neat and sectioned off, with big pools and lots of families. We’ve already had our fill of these affairs. It’s just too “camping for the sake of camping”. You end up enclosed in a fake world. SO we headed back up the river to check out one of the other sites we passed. This move proved to be a breakthrough. We are now pitched by the river, in a fairly empty field at a place called La Menitre. There is no swimming pool, no games room, no restaurant. There is however a wooden hut that serves draught cold beer, frites and chicken, there is also a shower block and the use of a freezer for the ice blocks we now use as my electric fridge kills the car in 10 minutes flat. We also have electricity!

The whole feeling is far more “back to nature”. It’s peaceful, apart from a rave a neighbour had last night and it’s very green. Honest camping I’d call it.

(That’s the Loire!)

The host is a lovely French lady who seems to run the place with her husband and lives in a static home in a hedge. They held a Spanish evening last night, with tables laid under the trees, serving fantastic looking Paella accompanied by a mad French guitarist who was supposed to be playing flamenco but most definitely wasn’t.
We hadn’t made reservations so we sat near by and ate frites and pizza but the husband of the outfit plied us with plenty of free sangria (possibly the most alcoholic version we’ve ever tried!) and proclaimed to me he was the “champion de sangria”. Great fun. We sat and got sozzled watching the locals (the guests all seemed to be from the local village) dance and clap to the music.

(I can’t do clever shots of sunsets with our compact camera so I got creative and hid the sun behind a sign! : - ) )

(Or another trick is to avoid the sun altogether! – the sky was so lilac I wish I could have captured it)
(We left the big Canon DSLR in England – it’s just too heavy and bulky. *sob*… )

The price is cheap too! – we have so far been paying about 22 Euros a day for a pitch with power on the “mega sites”. This one comes in at 6 Euros a day with power. The one further down the road that we poo-pooed was 35 a day!

So lesson learnt – ignore the guide book and just keep an eye out for “country” sites.

Our French is coming on well. We set the sat-nav to French the moment we set off. The upshot is we can now give and receive directions fluently! - Apres huit cent metre, traverse le rond point, deusiemme sortie, prui, alle tu driot! - more useful that you think : - ) - the rest is coming on well too. We hope to grab a dictionary today as we have big gaps in our vocab – though it’s Sunday so the only thing open seems to be the church. Talking of which, up next is a drive down the road to look at some famous abbeys and chateaus.

p.s. sitting with my coffee tying away, overlooking the Loire with an Abbey on the other side – not bad hey!!?! : - )

Update 2…

So next day! – We went on a little sight seeing trip today. We headed down the Loire to see Gennes and Saumur. On the way , keeping an eye out for a good café, all the while overtaking the Tour De France and trying not to kill them, we happened across a small market affair lining the road. People selling various farm produce and local wines – with lots of tasting going on. An easy decision to stop really. Had a lovely coffee and sat and watched the French taste wine with overly pursed lips and an air of seriousness , accompanied by lots of kissing. Nice start to the day.

Gennes was fairly uneventful. We went there as we read there are Roman ruins. We got to the entrance and a lone fat Frenchman with a scary looking skin condition was sitting at a desk. 6 Euro later he asked if we needed a guided tour. After establishing that it was free he told us it would be about 10 minutes.

10 Minutes later, he locked the gate and the tour proceeded, him being the guide. Not sure what the 10 minute wait was for. Interesting but we’ve seen far better amphitheatres. He was entertaining though and it was a nice way to spend the morning.

After that we headed to Saumur – famous for it’s sparkling wine. Very picturesque, with the Chateau dominating the skyline.

We had a good look around the outside (3 Euros each again. Nothing here is for free) – we couldn’t go inside as they are restoring it. After that it was a hearty lunch in the main square by the bridge, some bread shopping, and now we are back on the site drinking beers from our fridge that I have truly got a handle on now.
I’ve sussed the secret of solar power – use it when the sun is out.

(The Loire is a very flat area)

Oh – we have once again fallen into the silly accent trap – neither of us can help talking in an “Allo Allo” accent most of the time. It’s tiring at times but you just can’t ‘elp it.

Talking about accents, I missed a great opportunity for hilarity today. I was putting our ice block in the freezer at the camp site entrance when a car and caravan arrived. The clearly English woman said to me (imagine very poor French in a very English accent), “Bonjour – et tu have un pitch for le caravan?” – Now I could have replied along the lines of, “Pardon, parlez vous Francais, je ne compronde pas!”, or, “Pardon? My eengleesh iz not so well, you ‘ave to talk slow wiz me.”, and then broken into fluent English. Alas , I’m not that quick on my feet. I said, “you are English! So am I”. Sigh.

Another update - went to Angers today in search of books (French language) and wifi. Unbelievably we could not find wifi anywhere. We ended up driving round local villages with the laptop open searching for unsecured networks. Found one in the end, in a tiny village. Just as I was about to update the blog it chucked it down so we had to run :- ( . Got back to the site and the wind and rain had collapsed part of our tent and ripped a hole. We are off to the deep south in search of better weather!